Growing up in the “real” world

My younger brother, Matt, forwarded me this message today. Although I generally hate it when my Inbox gets filled with forwarded drivel, I thought the text of this email related nicely to our discussion last week about how people meet, make friends and “date” today, amid our brave new world of communications technology.

“This is dedicated to those born between 1930-1979:

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they were pregnant.

They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn’t get tested for diabetes.

Then we were put to sleep on our tummies in baby cribs covered with bright colored lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.

As infants & children, we would ride in cars with no car seats, booster seats, seat belts or air bags. Riding in the back of a pick up on a warm day was always a special treat.

We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle. We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.

We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank kool-aid made with sugar, but we weren’t overweight because…

We were always outside playing!

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.

No one was able to reach us all day.

And we were O.K.

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo’s, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 150 channels on cable, no video movies or DVD’s, no surround sound, CD’s or Ipods, no cell phones, no personal computers , no Internet or chat rooms…….

We had friends and we made friends and we went outside and found them!”